Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/75

 the first exploration of the St. Lawrence, which, though it formed no short cut to the Indies, was yet destined, as the largest body of fresh water in the world, to play a mighty part in history as a highway from the coast to the interior of North America.

COLIGNY.

Very different to that of any of his predecessors was the character of our next hero of North American discovery. Driven to bay in France by the long series of treacheries and cruelties which culminated in the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew on the 24th of August, 1572, the French Huguenots hoped to find in the New World a refuge from religious persecution; and after the failure of an attempt to found a colony in Rio Janeiro in 1555, the good Admiral Coligny sent out an expedition to that "long coast of the West India called La Florida," under the command of John Ribault, of Dieppe.

Trained in the stern school of adversity, Ribault started on his voyage prepared to face any amount of danger and privation in carrying out his mission of founding a little Huguenot Church in the wilderness. He was accompanied by many heretic noblemen imbued with the same spirit, and by a little band of well-tried troops. After a stormy voyage, the little fleet came in sight of the coast of Florida, in about N. lat. 29 1-2°, on the 27th April, 1562, and, after a brief halt, sailed northward till it reached the mouth of "a goodly and great river," the modern St. John's, to which the name of the "River of May" was in the first case given.

Entering the River of May in high delight with the beauty of the scenery lining its banks, the French refugees landed at a little distance from the sea, and set up a stone column bearing the arms of France, on a little hill overlooking the south bank, in token that the land henceforth belonged to his Majesty of France. The natives, who are described as "mild and courteous, well-shaped, of goodly stature, dignified, self-possessed, and of pleasant countenance," gazed with wonder, but with no notion of its significance, on the strange pillar set up among them; and leaving it as the sole token of their visit, the Frenchmen pressed on up the coast, passing one